


i am the antichrist to you

by Sabulum



Series: i wanna ruin our friendship [3]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Angst, Betrayal, Bombs, Communication, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, Identity Reveal, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Lena Luthor Finds Out Kara Danvers is Supergirl, POV Lena Luthor, Unhappy Ending, almost forgot, canon adjacent, chapter one: it goes bad, chapter two: it goes better, lena picks some splinters from her palms real aggressively, minor self-harm, oneshots
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:34:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24975406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sabulum/pseuds/Sabulum
Summary: Lena’s feelings toward Supergirl were complicated, heavy with the weight of family history. Lena’s feelings toward Kara were... well, still complicated, but at the very least they were refreshinglylighter. It was a relief to have at least one person with whom trust came easily. Lenaneededthat. She hadn't quite realized how much.Except then Kara saved her life, and things stopped being easy at all.—3. Identity Reveal (One version where they fall apart. One version where they work it out.)
Relationships: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor
Series: i wanna ruin our friendship [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1785322
Comments: 18
Kudos: 93





	i am the antichrist to you

**Author's Note:**

> Is it possible to have too many reveal fics? No. Was I unable to decide whether or not to have a happy ending, and so I wrote it both ways? Yes.
> 
> Title and chapter titles from [I Am the Antichrist to You](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EewB7xHHIvE) by Kishi Bashi.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TWs for Lena causing herself minor harm, drinking too much, then yelling and throwing things.

It wasn’t that Lena disliked Supergirl. Not exactly.

She trusted her, mostly—as much as was sensible. She respected her. Admired her, even. The woman had saved Lena’s life on multiple occasions, and had never seemed overly reluctant to do so. She didn’t treat her like anathema because of her last name. In many ways, she and Lena were peers. They both gave their all for the betterment of their city; they had worked together in its defense, and each suffered for it in their own ways.

After Lena sent her mother to prison, she would’ve almost said they were... friendly.

After the Daxamite invasion, they’d even had some friendly conversations.

But they were not _friends_.

If Lena had to choose one word to describe their relationship, it would be: cordial. If she were able to pick two, they would be: mutually beneficial. She viewed Supergirl as she might a particularly close business associate. Any fondness or admiration she felt was tempered, by necessity, with doubt.

Doubt of her intentions. Doubt of her faith in _Lena’s_ intentions.

Doubt as to the extent of her goodwill.

Their argument over the synthetic kryptonite, their tension over Sam... these were symptoms of a larger problem, and Lena wasn’t sure it was one that they could ever reconcile. She liked Supergirl, but there was an obstacle course of complicated feelings between them, and Lena resented that it was not even of their own making.

This knot of respect and admiration and resentment had her crossing her arms, one finger pressed to her lips thoughtfully as she watched a replay of last night’s news. She hadn’t sought it out—it was on when she turned on the television in her office—but she wouldn’t deny that she was fixated now, watching National City’s finest battle the raging warehouse fire.

Maybe it was a bad sign, that Lena watched Supergirl so closely. Observed her. _Judged_ her, even. How quickly could she put out a fire with her freeze breath? What were the variances for the fire’s size and heat; for the atmospheric conditions? Was she faster or slower when there were victims involved; how did they affect her priorities? Was she ever bothered by smoke inhalation? What if there were contaminants involved? How did she choose to enter the building; what was her regard for property damage? How did she try to mitigate her own potential for destruction?

Mostly, the answers to those questions were satisfying.

Lena tried not to feel like Lex at the beginning of his spiral, when he fixated on Superman’s flaws and failures.

Mostly, she succeeded.

The damage from this particular fire was extensive, but there were no casualties. Lena had watched it last night, too, with a glass of wine and a stack of paperwork keeping her company. The building did not fully collapse, and the fire did not spread. It was a good save. Well-executed. One of the satisfying ones.

Presently on-screen, the blaze was under control. Supergirl landed on the concrete within spitting distance of the cameras, shaking ash and debris out of her hair. She flashed an odd smile at the news team—uncomfortable, maybe?—before turning to speak to the Fire Marshall. Whatever he said had her nodding in response, but then she flinched, head snapping up. A second later, something within the building started to collapse. She zoomed back in through a busted window, gone before the newscaster could even comment, to save the roof from caving in.

Unlike Superman, she had a knack for damage control.

That was the difference, Lena thought, uncrossing her arms. Lena’s interest was not the same as Lex’s interest, because she wasn’t very much like Lex, and Supergirl wasn’t very much like Superman. It was only, _solely_ , that Lena was a scientist, and Kryptonians were objectively fascinating. There was no cause for concern. So long as Lena remained conscious of her relationship with the hero, it’d be fine.

Right?

She’d be _fine_.

 _Right_?

Right.

Jess came in to tell her that her seven o’clock call was holding, and Lena dismissed her with a nod of thanks. She turned off the remainder of the recap and fixated on work instead.

— — —

In the chaotic mess that her life had become—long days of exhausting responsibilities that she never asked for, never _aspired_ to; assassination attempts by her family, and character assassination attempts from their enemies; not to mention the relentless parade of killer aliens and superheroics—

Well. In all that mess, Lena contented herself, at least she had Kara.

These past months had made her reconsider whether her move to National City was a good idea, given her and Supergirl’s rocky relationship. The simple fact of Kara’s existence convinced her that it was. Regardless of what else was going on, regardless of what people said about her, Kara had a way of convincing Lena that it was all going to be alright, and Lena clung to that surety like a port in a storm. Some days it seemed Kara was the only one who trusted her at all, and... knowing that this sweet girl from Midvale never doubted her? Knowing that she believed in Lena Luthor?

It was addictive.

Their lunches had been going over lately, sometimes to the tune of half an hour. Lena knew it, Kara knew it, and neither one cared, so easily swept up in each other and in the simple warmth of their conversations. Today, Jess interrupted them with a knock, poking her head in apologetically.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Luthor, but your one o’clock is here early. I’ve asked him to wait outside for you.”

Kara’s head shot up, her search for an elusive café ending abruptly. “Oh. Oh, right, crap! You said—I’m sorry, let me just—”

She started tidying the remains of their food with impressive speed, flushing bright red.

“It’s alright, Kara,” Lena hastened to reassure her. Anything to spend another moment in her presence. “I’m just meeting with someone from R&D about a prototype. It’s nothing serious.”

“Still, I keep distracting you from work! You’re a busy woman! I’ll clean this up and get out of your hair, okay?”

“It’s fine, really. Take your time.” Waving off Kara’s objections, she turned to Jess. “You can go ahead and send him in now.”

“Yes, Ms. Luthor.”

“Lena—you—but—” Kara stammered, eyes going wide. She adjusted her glasses and glanced nervously toward the door, then down at the bag of trash and clean-but-disheveled napkins in her hand. The coffee table was still slightly greasy.

Lena only chuckled. “Dr. Stern and I go all the way back to MIT. Trust me, he’s seen worse messes than this.”

“Oh. Well...” She trailed off, shoulders relaxing. “If you’re sure.”

“I am.”

Before Lena could relate one of the less embarrassing stories from their shared Mechanical Design class, the door opened, grinding several processes in her brain to a halt and whirring several new ones to life. Her mouth fell closed into a fixed expression of politeness.

The man who entered her office was not Dr. Stern.

He was young and reedy, with wire-rimmed spectacles and unkempt hair that called to mind Young Frankenstein. Aside from the embroidered lab coat that marked him as belonging to R&D lab four, he wore no distinguishing clothes; he was, in fact, almost offensively unremarkable, bland in a way that made her hackles rise. In his hands was the expected design, a metal and glass mock-up of a portable solar panel, approximately the size and shape of a toaster. His teeth gleamed in an eager smile.

“Ms. Luthor,” he greeted. “A pleasure!”

“And who might you be?” she asked calmly.

Kara froze, crumpling the take-out bag in her fist.

“Oh. Apologies, Ms. Luthor, I thought you knew already. Dr. Stern has come down with something. He asked me to go over our progress with you in his stead.” He shifted the mock-up to one hand, lifting it sheepishly as if in offering. “I hope that’s alright?”

Dr. Connor Stern, who took fierce pride in his work and was _not_ afraid of rescheduling. Connor, who leapt at any chance to discuss a project with his former lab partner.

Lena’s heart rate kicked up. At almost the same moment, Kara began edging her way over to the trash can beside Lena’s desk, no longer in a hurry to leave.

“I’m sorry, I hadn’t been informed,” Lena said. “My apologies, mister...?”

“Jeff Zimmern,” he said, beaming. He shoved his free hand in the pocket of his lab coat.

It was then that she knew.

Cutting a warning glance at Kara, she pressed her panic button. “I see. You’re not one of my employees, are you, Mr. Zimmern?”

He barked a laugh. “What? Way to make a guy feel welcome. I’ve worked here for almost a year, Ms. Luthor. Surely you remember seeing me around?”

“I’m afraid not, Mr. Zimmern,” she said. “There are no lab technicians with that name.”

His expression hardened.

Ever since Medusa, ever since Lillian burrowed her way into L-Corp’s finances like a computer virus, Lena had not only had the company audited: she upped security on all the labs. She now vetted everyone with access to any equipment, files, or materials that could even _tangentially_ be used to synthesize kryptonite. She had memorized five departments’ worth of names and faces. And this man was not one of hers.

So, that raised the question: was he one of Lillian’s? Or one of Lex’s?

Kara glanced back and forth between them, biting her lip in concern, but she didn’t move to leave as Lena had hoped. Instead, she straightened. Her shoulders went back. Her fists clenched, something like panic in her eyes.

Before Lena could attempt an interrogation, the man heaved a resigned sigh.

“I was hoping to be more subtle about this,” he murmured. “Should’ve known that was wishful thinking.”

The hand in his pocket shifted and the corner of his mouth twitched upward.

“This is from Lex.”

Well. That answered that.

“Get down!” Kara shouted, at the same time that Lena opened her mouth to warn her—and then Lena was on the ground, pushed there by a blur of motion, and sweet, idealistic Kara tackled him around the waist like a linebacker.

“What— _no_!”

There was a clatter as he dropped the mock-up at his feet, and then heat. Lena barely saw the explosion, she just heard it—a blast so loud that her ears erupted with pain, dulling to a shrill ringing—and her reinforced desk vibrated through the rivets attaching it to the floor. Shrapnel flew above and around her, jagged shards of glass and metal and _wood_ , god, flaming chunks _of her office_ , and smoke flooded the room in a billowing cloud. She took too-big a breath and doubled over in hacking coughs, chest seizing from the noxious fumes of the propellant.

She was still coughing when she forced herself to her feet, throwing herself into the mess with Kara’s name on her lips.

Fuck, what was she thinking? What the hell did she _do_? Lena couldn’t lose her—not anyone, not again, but especially not _her_ —

Her heel caught on something and she tripped, falling to her hands and knees on exposed steel and air. Half the floor was _gone_ at the explosion’s epicenter, opening through rebar onto the purposefully empty room below, and Lena gawked for all of a second before scrambling forward on splintered wood, cutting her hands, not caring. She groped through the acrid smoke, staying low, breath coming shallow and frantic. Her sinuses stung, and her eyes watered. She could barely see.

“ _Kara_ ,” she grated through a burning throat.

Then, through the settling haze, she saw a figure on her knees, blonde hair wild from the explosion. She froze in stunned relief.

Kara looked—fine? There was no way, no, the floor—

The red and blue was slow to register. Like her brain was skipping over it.

What she saw first: Kara’s head bowed and turned to one side, her shoulders trembling, one hand over her mouth like she was about to be sick. What she saw second: the bloody remains of their attacker.

Her eyes locked on the grisly figure, then settled slowly back on Kara, no farther from the blast than he had been. _Closer_. Unharmed.

The red and blue registered.

Lena became aware of her own slack jaw like she was viewing another person, watching them suffer a world-ending revelation in real time. She snapped back to herself so quickly that her teeth clicked shut. Kara turned, then, to fix her with a devastated expression, wisps of smoke still rising from her. Scraps of pastel fabric clung to her shoulders, but the suit beneath was unmistakable.

Christ. She—

She’d been lying this whole time. It was all a lie.

When Lena opened her mouth to speak—though what she’d say, she had no _fucking_ clue—she started coughing, doubling over to hack smoke and chemicals out of her lungs. Kara was at her side in an instant, supporting her with trembling hands.

“Are you okay?”

Lena could barely hear the words, but Kara was patting her down for injuries and her meaning was clear enough. Lena batted her hands away, suddenly, viscerally aware that they could _crush steel_. “I’m—fine.”

No.

“Actually, that’s a lie,” she forced through gritted teeth. “How the fuck do you think I am, Kara?”

When Kara reached for her again, expression twisting in pain, Lena recoiled. Kara froze like she’d been struck, hand still extended.

Lena could just make out her desperate, “... sorry.”

“Save it.” Her chest burned. Her voice was hoarse. Her eyes watered. She blamed it on the smoke; gestured sharply at the thick haze that surrounded them. “Deal with this. Fix it. Isn’t that what you do?”

Kara opened her mouth, then closed it slowly and nodded.

Supergirl had always had a knack for damage control. Looking everywhere except at Lena, she rose shakily to open the balcony door, handling it like it was made of paper, suddenly nervous. Wary of causing further damage, Lena noted. A process in Lena’s brain whirred to life; a computer restarting. Kara spared her a worried glance before clearing the smoke with a well-placed blast of freeze breath, putting out any smoldering remains in the process, and Lena did not make any effort not to stare. She calculated volumes of air displacement and determined categorically that, no, Supergirl was not bothered by smoke inhalation in the slightest.

Wasn’t that _fascinating_.

Part of the ceiling was missing, mirroring the floor. Kara blinked up at the wrecked plaster, bit her lip, then made a judgment call and pulled down the most egregiously dangling chunks, using one to fill the dangerous vacancy in the floor. Priorities skewed toward protecting humans over mitigating property damage, Lena noted. Her eyes darted to Lena again in something like guilt—but over what? Over ripping pieces off her ceiling, or over displaying such easy strength in front of someone who was _never supposed to know_? What type of damage control was it?

Vaguely, Lena registered that she was nauseous. A hundred emotions roiled unpleasantly in her gut until she simply fixated on the facts: someone had tried to kill her, again, and Kara ostensibly saved her from the explosion, which she survived because she was fucking indestructible.

The only silver lining in this was that Kara was still alive.

More processes whirred to life, then: were there other attackers? Other bombs? Where was Dr. Stern? And more, rapidly: she needed to lock down R&D _now_ , she needed her security team, the entire building was in danger, Lex’s people had infiltrated her—

“Lena—”

Kara turned to her again, but Lena snapped. “Shut up. I don’t want to hear it.”

“Lena, please.”

“Someone just broke into my building and tried to kill me.” Someone had been in her fucking _labs_. “Forgive me if I don’t have the emotional capacity right now—”

Kara’s gaze flickered sideways, and Lena saw more than heard her say, “Someone’s coming.”

The front wall of her office had a crack in it, and the door hung open at an angle, giving a clear view into the empty hall. Dust and shrapnel littered the floor in a perfect path to the elevator, where the floor indicator had almost reached their level.

She saw Kara mouth, “... security.”

Lena’s teeth clicked shut. Her eyes locked on the very distinctive crest of a very exposed suit, attached to the otherwise very recognizable figure of Kara Danvers.

“Fuck,” she said succinctly.

Mind racing, Lena’s eyes darted toward her balcony door at the same moment Kara started to move towards it. Her hand lashed out. “ _No_. Jess knows that you were here. They’ll be expecting to find you with me.”

Kara stared at her, then at her unflinching grasp on her wrist, panic creeping into her expression.

It twisted something unpleasant in Lena’s chest.

“Just—” Gritting her teeth, Lena pushed to her feet. When she stumbled, Kara caught her, and Lena jerked away. “This way. Move.”

Instinct drove her to the door in her office, shoving Kara through to the attached suite like she was a volatile substance that Lena was trying to get rid of. The ringing in her ears swelled to a cacophony. She barely managed to order, “find some clothes and clean up,” before she was whirling to find security already in the hallway, and she didn’t bother to close the door, tripping over her heels in her haste to intercept them.

“We’re fine!” she yelled, probably too loud. “We’re fine, he’s dead! Please be careful. The floor is unstable.”

She caught her head of security, Julio, at the swinging office door. He was saying something, but she only caught “alert” and “Ms. Huang.”

“I can’t hear you.” Lena met his gaze squarely, blocking the doorway as much as possible. “Neither of us is hurt, but my ears are ringing. I need you to lock down the building and evacuate the fourth R&D lab. Someone was posing as a member of their team, and he had a mock-up with a bomb concealed inside. There may be more where that came from, and he likely assaulted Dr. Stern.”

Julio nodded, turning to yell at a member of his team. They were already speaking into an ear-piece, obeying her instructions without hesitation. When Julio turned back, she caught, “...sure you’re fine?”

“Just shaken. I promise.”

He nodded again and gestured toward the elevator, raising his eyebrows. She caught enough words to understand that he wanted to take them to a secure room to wait for the police.

“That’s fine.”

He hesitated, then gestured at something behind her. “And her?”

Lena struggled not to broadcast her reluctance and turned around. Kara had procured an ill-fitting sweater from Lena’s wardrobe, the scraps of her old clothes were gone, evidence neatly erased, and there was a crack in her glasses that hadn’t been there before. She stuttered her way through an explanation with a convincing look of terror, the guard in front of her overwhelmed by her many hand gestures. He wasn’t questioning her very intently at all, Lena noted. Her eyes even shimmered a little, red-rimmed like she was genuinely about to cry.

She was good at this.

God, of course she was. She’d been lying about her identity for _years_.

 _Fuck_.

Julio tapped Lena’s arm to get her attention, then spoke. “... with us ... trust her?”

“She stays with me,” Lena said, unable to answer that question honestly.

Julio was a professional, though. That was all he needed. He nodded, turning to bark orders at his team, and within moments he and three other guards were leading them through the building, the rest of his team staying behind to secure the office.

— — —

Lena’s hearing returned at first in slow increments, then all at once, like a wave rushing to shore. It made the silence in the break room seem especially loud.

There were splinters in her palms from her earlier unsightly scampering—blood, too, clinging to some of them—and a large scrape marred her left thumb. She hadn’t realized until they were in the elevator, whereupon she took pains to hide them, more annoyed than hurt; not wanting Julio to raise a fuss, not wanting to deal with the indignity of a paramedic on top of the inconvenience of speaking to the police.

In hindsight, she’d been stupid. Reckless. What could she have done even if Kara weren’t invulnerable? Saved her life?

Yeah, right.

Luthors weren’t supposed to panic.

Now, huddled in an uncomfortable folding chair—which she made a note to replace as soon as possible—with the fluorescents washing out her already pallid skin, Lena pulled splinters from beneath her skin with sharp jerks of her fingertips, taking vicious satisfaction in the resulting jolts of pain.

Luthors weren’t supposed to feel a lot of things, love foremost among them. It was never worth the fallout.

Kara was infuriatingly untouched, of course. She had taken no more than a minute to brush plaster out of her hair, then she peered at Lena over her cracked glasses and took up hovering awkwardly at her shoulder.

“Are... are you okay?” she asked for the third time.

Lena did not reply, distantly aware that she was probably being X-Rayed. She resisted the urge to reach up and tear the glasses off of Kara’s face.

Clearing her throat, Kara edged closer. “I, um. I thought you said you weren’t hurt?”

“I’m not.”

“But you...?” She trailed off weakly as Lena’s shoulders tensed. “Right. Um. I can help if you want? Do you need—”

“I’m _fine_.”

Lena turned to glare and found Kara literally twiddling her thumbs. “I just—that looks like it hurts? Probably.”

“Oh, it does, does it?” Lena froze with a splinter the approximate width of a toothpick caught between the stubs of her nails.

“Um.”

“Get a lot of splinters, do you? Papercuts? Burns?” She sneered, tugging the wood free.

“No, but—”

“How about blisters? Bruises? Sprained ankles?”

“No—”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” she said through gritted teeth, hissing as her digging drew a pinprick of blood. “So why don’t you _shut up_ and let a professional deal with this?”

“You’re not a doctor,” Kara said hesitantly.

“No, but at least I’m—”

Lena cut herself off with a sharp glance at the door, where the guards had posted for her protection. She glared at Kara instead, finishing the thought with her eyes. _At least I’m human._

Kara’s shaky breath said that she understood well enough anyway. It made Lena wish that her ears were still ringing so she didn’t have to hear it. She may have been angry, but hurting Kara still made her feel like a piece of shit.

Well. She was, wasn’t she? So it was only appropriate.

“You should be more gentle with yourself,” Kara said, more soft than chiding.

Schooling her expression into something appropriately ruthless, Lena continued to pick at her hands, _not_ gentle, the sting becoming increasingly intense as the rush of adrenaline wore off. At some point, Kara sighed in obvious unhappiness and slunk away from her side. Lena heard her rummaging through the cheap melamine cabinets, and she came back with a first aid kit which she deposited quietly beside Lena’s elbow. A peace offering.

Lena ignored it.

Another moment passed, then Kara eased into one of the other chairs around the ugly, circular table.

“So, um. You’re obviously angry...”

“Am I?” Lena yanked another splinter free. “No wonder you’re an investigative journalist. How did you come by such keen powers of observation?”

“Right, yeah.” Kara took a deep breath. “You—you deserve to be. Angry. I’m really, really sorry. Um. That you found out like this. I’ve wanted to tell you—”

“Now’s really not the time, Kara.” Lena cut her gaze pointedly toward the guards.

“No, yeah, I know, but I can... I can still maybe try to explain?”

Her voice shook. She sounded genuinely desperate. It tugged at Lena’s heartstrings, made her _ache_ , and she couldn’t help but look up, weak even in her fury. Kara was biting her lip and staring at Lena in such open misery that Lena wanted to give in to her, wanted to believe that her desperation was genuine, wanted to _soften_.

If this were an hour ago, for Kara, she would have.

But there was an obstacle course of complicated feelings between Lena and Supergirl, and someone had set off a fucking bomb in the middle of it.

“No,” Lena said, wreckage from the explosion in her voice. “Not now. Not here.”

She allowed her tone to say: _not ever_.

After a moment of silence, Kara cleared her throat and plowed forward anyway. “When?”

Lena didn’t answer, her hands trembling minutely. They twitched toward becoming fists, and she forced them still; laid them flat on the table instead, staring down at a coffee stain as intently as she might analyze a piece of flawed code. Kara’s fingers tapped nervously on the lid of the first aid kit.

“Can I at least thank you?” she tried.

“For what?”

“Earlier. You know. The—the guards. You helped me.”

Lena opened her mouth, then closed it, glaring at the abraded skin of her thumb. “And?”

“I just... I’m grateful?” Kara said weakly. “For—that you—”

“That I protected you?”

“Um. Y-Yeah.”

Her head snapped up, sharp with leashed fury. “Did you think I wouldn’t?”

Kara visibly swallowed.

Breathing slow and deep, Lena clung to her composure by the barest of margins. “Even if I’m angry, even if you lied to me—we _were_ friends.” She ignored Kara’s flinch. “And I’m not going to just—out—” She gestured angrily toward the crest hidden behind an ill-fitting sweater. “I’m not that petty. I respect you, I respect _what you do_ enough not to put you in danger.”

“No, I know, I didn’t—”

“I respect you,” Lena cut in, “so could at least pretend to have the slightest bit of faith in _me_? Or is that act starting to wear thin for you?”

“I do—I—Lena, I’m just grateful!” Kara said, frustrated. “Can you let me finish a sentence? I know you have my back, and I appreciate it, okay? I’m not surprised! I’m just... grateful,” she finished lamely.

Lena set her jaw. “Sure.”

God, she would have believed that in a heartbeat an hour ago. But that was the point, wasn’t it? She had to look at everything Kara ever said, ever _did_ , in a new light. Every scrap of hope that she’d ever offered, every word she’d ever spoken on Lena’s behalf, the easy way that she trusted—fuck, none of it was _ever_ that simple. How could she stomach it, pretending to believe in Lena _Luthor_ for so long?

“I swear I wanted to tell you,” Kara insisted, like she could read her mind. “This was never because I didn’t trust you, Lena.”

“Sure.”

Lena couldn’t keep the bitterness from her voice. She stared at the chipped tabletop for a long moment, then closed her eyes and smothered the fire in her chest with the ease of long practice.

“I need a drink.”

Rubbing the bridge of her nose where a headache had taken up residence, she forced her back straight and ignored Kara’s defeated whisper of her name. In absence of alcohol, she crossed to the ancient coffee maker and went through the motions of brewing a cup, sipping it just to give herself something to do, not registering the flavor. The paper cup stung her hands, but she did not so much as glance at the first aid kit again.

She sat as far from Kara as she could and committed to not speaking again until the police arrived.

— — —

Kara turning up at her apartment that evening wasn’t a surprise, even though Lena had never actually told her where she lived. It made sense that Supergirl would know, just as it made sense that she would insist on pursing a conversation. She’d always had a knack for fucking damage control.

Lena was barely through the door to her penthouse, still kicking off her heels, when she froze at the thump on her balcony and saw the familiar caped figure. She glared through the window for a fraught moment, working her jaw in humiliation. Because, of course. Of course she arrived by the balcony and not the front door. A clear delineation of roles: Super and Luthor, diametrically opposed, like her friendship with Kara Danvers meant fucking _nothing_. Like Lena hadn’t just spent half her day auditing her labs, cleaning up her security, ensuring that Cadmus didn’t have access to fucking kryptonite.

Even though Lena had already protected her once, who cared?

Just because Lena expected it didn’t mean she wasn’t furious. She threw her purse at a wall and crossed to yank open the door.

“Kara,” she said with forced calm.

“Lena,” Kara greeted simply, hands on her hips. Now that she was out of civilian clothes, she looked every inch the stoic hero, and it galled.

“I realize I didn’t say I never wanted to see you again, but I thought it was implied.”

“It was, but I thought that we should talk.”

“Right.” Lena took a deep breath to steady herself, gripping the glass door of her balcony so hard that it creaked. “And you’d know best, wouldn’t you?.”

Holding Kara’s concerned gaze with one of annoyance, Lena wondered if it would make a difference if she asked her to leave. Would she listen? How did you kick a superhero out of your apartment? How did you make her do anything she didn’t want to do short of synthesizing kryptonite?

Lena slid the door open wider, gesturing her inside, then turned and walked away.

Kara entered, closing the door behind her so softly that it didn’t make a sound, calm where Lena was fraying at the edges. Spirals of calculations about superstrength and applied force filled a back corner of Lena’s mind, undeterred by such trivial things as emotion. They left a bitter taste on her tongue. Like she was any sort of scientist at all, not even realizing that the local superhero and her best friend were _the same goddamn person_. She crossed to her liquor cabinet and poured a generous tumbler of the most expensive scotch she could find, knocking half of it back without hesitation—and it felt good, so she knocked back the rest, then poured another. The burn was almost enough to distract her from the argument she was about to have.

Finally, Lena gathered her emotions in a tight fist and nodded to herself. She turned back around.

“Talk,” she commanded.

Kara shifted from foot to foot, glancing from Lena to the couch and back.

Lena glared at her in barely leashed hatred.

“Right,” Kara muttered, and talked.

She explained haltingly, while Lena nursed her second and third glasses of scotch, about her _real_ life history: her arrival on Earth, her cousin’s abandonment of her, her placement with the Danvers, her relationship with Alex. She explained like she was reading from the pages of an encyclopedia, laying out bare facts about her life; she explained like she could make up for not truly being human if she told Lena everything, like this wasn’t just a band-aid over a gaping arterial wound. She told Lena how she’d learned, early, to hide her powers from humanity. She told Lena how she’d struggled to control them, aided by Jeremiah, and Alex, and infrequently by her cousin. She told Lena _about her cousin_ , who she’d decided to emulate, desperate to give her life and her loss some meaning.

Her cousin.

Superman.

Clark. Fucking. Kent.

At around that point, Lena stopped listening.

Was this what finally drove Lex over the edge? Finding out that his best friend had been lying to him? For _years_? About even being _human_? Talk about salt in the wound, when Lex so vocally _hated_ Superman—

“I’ve thought of a million ways to tell you, and I’ve almost done it hundreds of times,” Kara was whispering, her expression falling the longer Lena stared at her in silence. “I was just—I was scared. I’ve always been so scared.”

Scared. Christ, Lena had never sympathized with her brother before, but this betrayal fucking _burned_. It scared her, too. It was fire in her chest, shrapnel in her throat, swirling heat and disgust in her stomach. She understood Lex’s madness now and she felt its flames licking at the edges of her thoughts.

Lena finished her third scotch and slammed the glass down, cutting Kara off.

She had decided how she wanted their argument to begin.

“James told me that he was Guardian,” she accused levelly. “So why couldn’t you?”

Kara stared at her with her mouth open for a moment before drawing herself up, indignant. “Lena, that’s... that’s not the same.”

“Isn’t it?”

“No?” From her tone, this was the most obvious thing in the world. “James telling you that he’s Guardian and me telling you that I’m Supergirl are not, in any way, even remotely equivalent? Don’t act like you think they are.”

“Why?” Lena asked, pretending not to understand even though she did, she _did_ — “Because James means nothing to me, and you mean everything? Because he’s hardly an acquaintance, and you were supposed to be my best friend?”

Kara set her jaw, not even flinching at the past tense. “No, it’s not about—”

“It seems pretty clear-cut to me,” Lena interrupted. “You’re both liars, so why are your lies somehow more acceptable than his? Why is your cowardice any better?”

“I’m not a coward!” Kara burst out. “Knowing my secret is dangerous, Lena. I was just trying to protect you!”

“Like I’m not in danger already?” Lena couldn’t help but stare in outrage. Was that really the argument she wanted to make? “Like I’m not endangered simply by working with you, whether I know who you are or not? Like my family doesn’t _already_ want to kill me? Try again, Kara.”

Kara flinched, biting her lip. “I—”

“Christ. You know, I almost preferred James’ open suspicion. At least it was honest.” She shook her head and spun to refill her glass, to hide how her hands shook, struggling to keep her breathing even. “He admitted to betraying me, and I accepted it. We understand each other. But you? You’re a piece of fucking work, aren’t you?”

“I never meant to betray you,” Kara said weakly.

“No, you know what?” Lena barreled right over her, because even _she_ had to know that was pathetic. “You’re right. It is different, isn’t it? Your betrayal is worse, because _you asked_ him to break into my lab. You claimed to trust me even as you lied to my face, and where James was man enough to come clean and admit it, to admit his identity to me, you just kept on playing me like—”

“It’s different for me!” Kara finally yelled. “My secret carries more weight, alright?! I’m not like James!”

She advanced a step.

There.

“Why?” Lena pressed, breathless.

“Because Guardian is just something that he _does_. Supergirl is part of who I _am_!”

There.

There it was.

As quickly as she’d advanced, Kara took a step backwards, drawing in on herself, her expression strained. Lena stared at her in something like fascination, watching how neatly she tucked herself away; how skillfully she made herself small again.

“He can take the suit off whenever he wants,” she said quietly, aching. “He can—he can step away from it and just be _normal_ , just be a man. When he’s not in the armor, he’s just James Olsen. He’s human. But me?”

Unable to meet her gaze, Kara paced aimlessly. Her fists clenched, but she unclenched them with a deliberateness that had to be practiced, like anger was a bad habit that she was used to curbing. She crossed her arms instead, tight and close to her chest, grabbing hold of herself with a ferocity she couldn’t apply to anyone or any _thing_ else. Nothing but herself. Mitigating damage.

“It’s not like I made a decision one day to be like this,” she whispered. “Even if I did decide what to _do_ with my powers, I can never get away from them, and I don’t get to turn them off. What I give up by telling my secret is—it’s intrinsic to me. It’s who I am. _What_ I am.”

She swallowed thickly, looking away.

“It’s a big deal, telling someone that I’m not even human.”

And that was the crux of it, wasn’t it.

She was an alien. _Kryptonian_.

And Lena was a Luthor.

Vindication and grief were a potent cocktail, blending with the thousand-dollar scotch. They fogged Lena’s mind, slowly fracturing her control of the chemical reaction taking place in her chest. No matter what Lena did, it was never good enough— _she_ would never be good enough. It was impossible for Kara to ever trust her, for Lena to ever be worthy.

She watched with barely-held composure as Kara slumped, her vulnerability fading to something like despair the longer Lena remained silent. She ran a shaking hand through her hair, eyes flickering across Lena’s face.

“Lena?” she tried. “Please say something.”

Lena took a drink. It burned all the way down. “You have no right to demand anything from me, Kara. Least of all words.”

“I—I mean, I kinda just poured my heart out a little. I explained everything. Made myself kinda vulnerable with the whole alien bit, and now you’re just... just kinda staring at me.” Biting her lip, Kara searched Lena’s face desperately. For a weakness, maybe, that Lena refused to give up. “Don’t you... don’t you owe me something after that? Even if you’re angry?”

“Even if I’m angry,” Lena repeated, perfectly level.

She faltered. “Y-Yeah. I mean, aren’t I worth that much?”

“Because we were friends?”

“Yes, because we’re friends,” Kara insisted, trying not to look like she was just moments from falling apart.

No. No, they were far past friendship now.

“That’s rich, considering you’ve been lying to me from the moment we met.” Lena’s accent thickened with growing anger, sharpening the edges of her consonants like shrapnel. “If we’re talking trust, if you think we _owe_ each other anything, then you shouldn’t have spat in my fucking face! Do you know how much effort it took to get me to believe in you? How much effort _I_ put into letting my guard down—into letting you in? _I_ poured my heart out, and you listened to me go on and on about how many people have betrayed me while saying _nothing_!”

Wincing at her sharp tone, Kara blinked rapidly down at the floor. “I know. I didn’t—I didn’t want to be another one of the people who had hurt you.”

“So, what, you just kept lying?” Lena hissed. “You just kept digging yourself a deeper hole?”

“Yes! Look, I know it hurt you, and I’m sorry! I always knew it would. But it’s hard, telling people—and that just made it harder—”

“If you were truly sorry, you would’ve come clean,” Lena said, grimly final.

“It’s not that simple!”

“No? Well. Let’s address that, then.” Lena bared her teeth in a mockery of a grin, the fire in her chest sparking hot and bright. She was sick of these games. She was sick of being placated. “There’s really one underlying issue here, as I see it.”

“Um. What—”

“Who am I to you?”

Kara gawked at her. “What?”

“Who am I to you.” Lena bit each word off harshly. “I want you to tell me.”

She advanced a step. Kara took a step back, eyes going even wider. The remainder of Lena’s control exploded.

“Tell me!” She gestured wildly, spilling scotch on the carpet. “If we were ever worth anything to each other, then tell me, Kara. Tell me the truth! Tell me what you really think of me!”

“You know what I think of you,” Kara said, voice shaking.

“I do,” Lena forced through gritted teeth. “But I want to hear you say it, _Supergirl_. You put on one face, then another, so you can play me—you say you trust me, that I’m not like my family, but then you don’t trust me not to try and fucking kill you,” she hissed. “So just be honest for once in your _goddamn_ life and tell me that I’m nothing more than another villain to you.”

Kara inhaled sharply. “No, that’s—”

“Don’t act like that’s not what you were thinking when you learned I had kryptonite!” Lena yelled, voice breaking with it. “You thought I’d expose you to my _security team_! You’ve never trusted me! You found a shred of evidence that I might be guilty and that’s all you needed! All your pretty words about how good, and kind, and generous I am, and it amounts to nothing! Less than nothing. You’ve been lying to my face for _years_.”

“It wasn’t like that!” Tears gleamed in Kara’s eyes, turning them the most devastating blue. “I messed up. The DEO was—and I messed up, I _knew_ you were mad at me, and didn’t want to lose you. I’ve lost so much already, Lena. I couldn’t lose you, too.”

A ragged laugh forced its way out of Lena’s throat. “Well, bad news. You have. You couldn’t destroy our relationship more thoroughly if you tried.”

Kara wrapped her arms around herself, retreating and shaking her head helplessly, her tears spilling over. And it was satisfying, in some small way, to watch her expression crumple. It felt good, to know that she was capable of hurting Kara at least that much. But not as good as it should have.

Hurting her like this simply was not _enough_ to match the magnitude of what she’d done to Lena. Lena finally understood why Lex went mad, and a bitter, cloying hatred rose up, choking her. Flames licked through her like an adrenaline rush and her lungs ached with smoke; her thoughts were a smoldering wreckage, and the place in her chest that Kara once occupied was a burnt-out husk, hollow and devastated. Her head was spinning. She wanted Kara’s world to fucking _end_. She’d let Lena _need_ her.

She registered that Kara was speaking, but there was a ringing in her ears that drowned it out. Her grip on the glass tightened until her fingers ached.

“Get out,” she said, barely audible.

“No, Lena, please—”

“Get _out_!”

Lena threw the glass, viciously satisfied when it exploded into countless shards against Kara’s chest, and even more when Kara flinched as if it could actually hurt her. And that— _that_ felt good. When Lena whirled to grab another glass—the whole damn tray maybe, because fuck, why not?—Kara beat a hasty retreat toward the window, stumbling over herself with a lack of grace almost unheard of in Supergirl, but not uncommon to Kara Danvers. A hero reduced to cowering.

Lena froze at the sight.

The empty scotch bottle trembled in her hand, her heart seizing like it wanted to claw its way out of her chest.

Slowly, haltingly, she lowered the bottle.

“I never want to see you again,” she said, low and raw. “Leave me the hell alone, or else I’ll live down to all your worst expectations for me. Do you understand? I will make Lex’s hatred of Superman look like a child’s tantrum. If you show your face here, or at my office, _ever_ again, for anything less than an emergency—if I so much as think you’re toeing the line—I will _ruin_ you, Kara. I swear to god, I will. Stay away from me.”

Kara stood rooted on the balcony, listening without turning around. She nodded, too quickly for Lena to pretend that she wasn’t crying—shuddered and curled forward like she was moments away from collapsing in on herself—then she flung herself into the air and was gone in a blur of red and blue.

Hopefully forever.

The flames burnt themselves out, and Lena crumpled in their wake. She fell onto her elbows on her liquor cabinet and raised one shaking hand to her mouth, half-certain that she was going to be sick. Tears stung her eyes, and she let them fall.

She’d wanted to hurt her.

She would have.

God, loss did strange things to her family, but so did _love_.

Lena tried to tell herself this was a bridge she was better off having burnt. A weakness, a pathetic need, that she had no choice but to expunge. This fixation on Supergirl had to end. If she continued loving Kara, it would only drag her deeper into madness. Better to carve it out than to let it decay into something monstrous, like Lex; better to never see her again than to risk becoming _that_.

Lena buried her face in her hands, bitterness welling in her throat, and wished she’d never come to National City.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poll: Do you think Lena would actually ruin Kara, like she promised? Or do you think she’s waiting for Kara to call her bluff? Leave your thoughts and prayers in the comments RIP


End file.
